vour. Tom Lingard grew rich on the
sea and by the sea. He loved it with the ardent affection of a lover,
he made light of it with the assurance of perfect mastery, he feared it
with the wise fear of a brave man, and he took liberties with it as a
spoiled child might do with a paternal and good-natured ogre. He was
grateful to it, with the gratitude of an honest heart. His greatest
pride lay in his profound conviction of its faithfulness--in the deep
sense of his unerring knowledge of its treachery.

The little brig Flash was the instrument of Lingard's fortune. They came
north together--both young--out of an Australian port, and after a very
few years there was not a white man in the islands, from Palembang to
Ternate, from Ombawa to Palawan, that did not know Captain Tom and
his lucky craft. He was liked for his reckless generosity, for his
unswerving honesty, and at first was a little feared on account of his
violent temper. Very soon, however, they found him out, and the word
went round that Captain Tom's fury was less dangerous than many a man's
smile. He prospered greatly. After his first--and successful--fight with
the sea robbers, when he rescued, as rumour had it, the yacht of some
big wig from home, somewhere down Carimata way, his great popularity
began. As years went on it grew apace. Always visiting out-of-the-way
places of that part of the world, always in search of new markets for
his cargoes--not so much for profit as for the pleasure of finding
them--he soon became known to the Malays, and by his successful
recklessness in several encounters with pirates, established the
terror of his name. Those white men with whom he had business, and who
naturally were on the look-out for his weaknesses, could easily see that
it was enough to give him his Malay title to flatter him greatly. So
when there was anything to be gained by it, and sometimes out of pure
and unprofitable good nature, they would drop the ceremonious "Captain
Lingard" and address him half seriously as Rajah Laut--the King of the
Sea.

He carried the name bravely on his broad shoulders. He had carried it
many years already when the boy Willems ran barefooted on the deck of
the ship Kosmopoliet IV. in Samarang roads, looking with innocent eyes
on the strange shore and objurgating his immediate surroundings with
blasphemous lips, while his childish brain worked upon the heroic idea
of running away. From the poop of the Flash Lingard saw in the ear